Golden Age of Television (2000s–present)

[19] The contemporary period is generally identified as beginning in 1999 with The Sopranos,[20][21] with debate as to whether the age ended (or "peaked") in the mid-late 2010s[22][20][23][24][25] or early 2020s (to the point of calling its replacement "Trough TV"),[26][27][28][29] or remains ongoing.

[56] Production values got higher than ever before[57] on shows such as Band of Brothers,[58] Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Homeland to the point of rivaling cinema, while anti-heroic series like The Sopranos and The Wire were cited as improving television content thus earning critical praise.

[59] Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice has argued that the current golden age began earlier with over-the-air broadcast shows like Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (both of which premiered in 1993), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997).

[60] With the rise of instant access to content on Netflix, creator-driven television shows like Breaking Bad, The Shield (2002), Friday Night Lights (2006) and Mad Men gained loyal followings that grew to become widely popular.

The success of instant access to television shows was presaged by the popularity of DVDs, and continues to increase with the rise of digital platforms and online companies.

A showrunner for an unnamed series on Netflix, a platform that has been especially aggressive toward releasing full seasons at once as a company policy, commented that the volume of existing content has made it more difficult to devote the time to binge watching.

"[20] Siobhan Lyons of The Conversation believes the 2022 finale of Better Call Saul marks the end of "the last of those defining, golden age shows," in a time increasingly oversaturated with streaming content and viewing options.

The network noted that the major streamers, with the exception of Disney+ (which NPR attributed to the company's strong brand recognition), were seeing diminishing quality and, particularly in the case of Netflix, declining popularity.

[75] Vulture expressed similar views in June 2023, speaking of Peak TV in the past tense and noting that the more artistic shows that marked the Golden Age of highbrow programming were also expensive and not particularly profitable, even if they drew new subscribers.

[82] This also coincided with an increased emphasis on business models that draw revenue from both advertising and subscriptions, prompting streaming providers to focus on productions that have mass appeal while also reducing investment in high-risk projects targeting niche audiences.

[83] The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath saw major reductions in the workforce and cancellations of multiple productions to save money on basic residuals and music licensing costs, which led to a worsening condition for writers and actors, setting the stage for the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes.

[87] A 2021 interview of social media influencers noted that the teen sitcoms and teen dramas from the early Golden Age, driven by continued presence in reruns and video-on-demand platforms, have stronger followings among Generation Z than contemporary shows; they feel that the latter are more geared toward pre-teens or adults instead of teenagers, try too hard to appeal to current trends, and lack a sense of familiarity compared to shows that have been around since they were born.

[32] This has coincided with an even more dramatic decline in viewership, with general-interest cable networks and several of the more established niche networks losing over half of their viewing audiences in the same period; David Bauder of the Associated Press noted that the corresponding declines in viewership and original programming were triggering a vicious cycle, and that by the mid-2020s, cable television had lost its ability to create "appointment television" events, instead relying on "ghost" programming such as low-quality, low-cost reality fare and reruns.

Tubi, the advertising-supported video on demand service owned by Fox Corporation, acquired the streaming rights to much of the content that HBO Max had jettisoned in 2023.

[90] Characteristics of this golden age are complicated characters who may be morally ambiguous or antiheroes, questionable behavior, complex plots, hyperserialized storytelling, diverse points of view, playful explorations of modern-day issues and would-be R-rated material.

[91][92][93][94] Genres of television associated with this golden age include dramas (especially ones originating on cable and digital platforms; some being called "peak bleak" due to the extremely pessimistic nature of shows like Succession and Game of Thrones[95]); sitcoms (especially ones that use comedy-drama which some critics would call "sadcoms"),[96] single-camera setup, or adult animation; sketch comedy (especially series linked to alternative comedy); and late-night talk shows (especially ones that emphasize news satire).

New York said that "the expensive signifiers of prestige TV — the movie stars, the set pieces, the cinematography — became so familiar and easy to appropriate that it could take viewers six or seven hours to realize the show they were watching was a fugazi".

[73] The number of original shows being produced has some, like FX CEO John Landgraf[103][104][105] and Time's TV critic Judy Berman,[1] worried about overwhelming the viewing audience to the point of what the latter called "peak redundancy".

New York quoted a "top agent" as decrying the contempt TV people had for mainstream audiences' tastes; "[P]eople seem to really like Two and a Half Men, and none of my writers want to write that.